Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783)

Birth and baptism in Artois

Benedict Joseph Labre was born on 26 March 1748 in the village of Amettes, in the old province of Artois, near Arras, then attached to the diocese of Boulogne.^[13][14] The day after his birth, he was baptized by his paternal uncle, François-Joseph Labre, a priest of the family — a detail that already foreshadows the decisive role this close clergy would play in his early formation.^[15]

The Labre family

He was the eldest of fifteen children.^[16][17] His father, Jean-Baptiste Labre, and his mother, Anne-Barbe Grandsire, belonged to the respectable rural middle class — small landowners, merchants, and millers of the Artois region — well-off enough to give their many children “considerable advantages in the matter of education”.^[18] The home was deeply Christian; there the child acquired the taste for prayer, the frequentation of the sacraments, and the horror of sin that would mark his whole life.

His first biographers note in him, from childhood, “a seriousness of thought and bearing far beyond his age” and “the liveliest horror of the least sin”, though this gravity never altered “a fund of cheerfulness which never left him until the end of his life”.^[19] This trait — a heroic austerity joined to a peaceful joy — would remain the signature of his sanctity.

Six years with his uncle, the parish priest of Érin

At twelve, his education was entrusted to his paternal uncle François-Joseph Labre, parish priest of Érin, with whom he went to live.^[20] For the six following years, young Benedict Joseph studied Latin, history, and the subjects suited to preparation for the priesthood, making “considerable progress”.^[21] His uncle dreamed of the secular priesthood for him; but the adolescent felt growing within him a wholly different call.

“A growing distaste for all knowledge that does not lead to God”

For, as he advanced in learning, a thirst for the absolute turned him away from erudition for its own sake. The Catholic Encyclopedia sums it up in a formula that has become famous: he could not overcome

“a constantly growing distaste for every form of knowledge that did not lead directly to union with God.”^[22]

Gradually laying aside profane authors, he fed on the Scriptures, the sermons of the Jesuit Le Jeune, and books of spirituality.^[23] At sixteen, his decision was made: he wanted to enter the Trappists, the most austere order in the Church. On his uncle's advice, he returned to Amettes to lay his plan before his parents — who refused it.^[24] It was the first of a long series of refusals that would punctuate his youth and, little by little, reveal to him a vocation that no cloister could contain.

The heroic death of his uncle (1766)

In September 1766, an epidemic struck the parish of Érin. The parish priest François-Joseph Labre spent himself at the bedsides of the sick and died heroically, a victim of his charity.^[25] Benedict Joseph, who had assisted him to the end, returned to Amettes in November. The disappearance of this protector removed the last family obstacle: free at last, he would knock, one after another, at the doors of the great contemplative orders.

With the Carthusians: Longuenesse and Neuville

He turned first to the Carthusians, those monks of silence whose solitude answered his desire. The charterhouse of Longuenesse sent him away: too young, and lacking the required philosophy.^[26] Received at last at the charterhouse of Neuville in October 1767, he took the habit there — but had to leave after six weeks: his fragile health and the austerity of the way of life exhausted him, and he was judged not to have a Carthusian vocation.^[27][28]

At La Trappe: the refused dream

There remained the first dream, La Trappe of Soligny, cradle of the harshest Cistercian reform. He presented himself there, but the abbey refused him in turn: too young, too “delicate” in health, without any particular recommendation.^[29] These doors closing one after another would have been, for anyone else, so many denials of a vocation. He received them as a purification: each refusal stripped him a little more of the security of a roof, a rule, a community.

Sept-Fonts: Brother Urban and the trial of the spirit

On 11 November 1769, he was finally admitted to the Cistercian abbey of Sept-Fonts in the Bourbonnais, where he took the habit under the name of Brother Urban.^[30][31] But the most mysterious trial awaited him there. After a few months, he was seized by spiritual anguish — scruples and interior troubles which his superiors judged threatening to his balance — and the community dismissed him from the novitiate.^[32] It was the last attempt: no order would keep him.

The meaning of a failure

Four attempts, four failures. The history of sanctity knows few beginnings so discouraging. But it was in this destitution of vocation that God was at work: Benedict Joseph was not made for the enclosure of an order, but for a cloister without walls, whose corridors would be the roads of Europe and whose chapels would be its shrines. Leaving Sept-Fonts in the spring of 1770, he did not return home: he took the road to Rome, and never stopped again.

In imitation of Saint Alexis

On the way, an interior light finally revealed his path to him. He understood, writes his biographer,

“that such was the will of God: that, after the example of Saint Alexis, he should abandon his country, his parents, and all that the world holds flattering, to lead a new life, a most painful, most penitential life — not in a desert nor in a cloister, but in the midst of the world, by devoutly visiting the famous shrines of Christendom.”^[33][34]

The model is Saint Alexis, the Roman patrician whose Life tells that, on his wedding night, he fled to live unknown and begging. Benedict Joseph made it the programme of his life: to be a voluntary stranger, without country or dwelling, rich in his poverty alone.

Farewell letters to his parents

From this period date the saint's rare writings: two letters to his parents, written in the first months of his wandering. In them he confides his resolve to leave everything for a life of pilgrimage, abandoning himself to Providence alone. The sentence that sums them up has endured:

“The good God will assist me and lead me.” — Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, letter to his parents^[35]

He would never see Amettes or his family again.

Seven years on the roads of Europe

Then began the great wandering. For about seven years (1770–1777), Benedict Joseph travelled on foot, “often several times over”, to the most celebrated shrines of Europe.^[36] It has been estimated that he walked nearly thirty thousand kilometres in all.^[37] Everywhere his appearance was the same: a young man in a worn cloak, “a rosary round his neck, another between his fingers”, carrying for all baggage a New Testament, a breviary which he recited daily, a copy of the Imitation of Christ, and a few devout books.^[38]

At Assisi, he received the cord of the Third Order of Saint Francis, thus joining the great Franciscan family without entering any friary: a layman, a penitent, free.^[39] The poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, whom he took for master, found in him one of its most literal disciples.

The pilgrim of Loreto

Of all these shrines, Loreto — the Holy House, the house of Nazareth which tradition venerates as transported to the Adriatic coast — became the heart of his Marian devotion. Even after settling in Rome, he would each year interrupt his beggar's life to walk again the long road to Loreto: a pilgrimage he would make until the year of his death.^[40] On this shrine, see the article The Shrine of Loreto.

The ruins of the Colosseum

Around 1777, the pilgrim settled in Rome, where he would spend the last six years of his life.^[41][42] Homeless, he first slept in the ruins of the Colosseum, that place sanctified by the blood of the martyrs, in the shadow of the crosses of the Way of the Cross then erected there.^[43] Later, a benefactor would offer him a pallet in a nearby hovel, but he continued to live, in the very heart of the Eternal City, the life of an invisible vagabond, mingled with the crowd of Rome's poor.

The “saint of the Forty Hours”

It was in Rome that the burning centre of his interior life was revealed: Eucharistic adoration. Wherever, in a church of the city, the Forty Hours (Quarant'Ore) were celebrated — that solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament which passed from church to church — Benedict Joseph would go and remain there “whole days”, motionless, his face transfigured.^[44][45] This practice became “the principal occupation of his life”, so that the Roman people gave him his most lasting nickname: il santo delle Quarant'Ore, the saint of the Forty Hours.^[46]

“Where the Blessed Sacrament is, there is Heaven.” — Saying attributed to Saint Benedict Joseph Labre^[47]

Absolute destitution

His poverty exceeded all measure. His clothing was but an old cloak; his food, “a piece of bread or a few herbs, often only once a day”.^[48] He never begged for alms, but accepted what was given to him — and at once gave to those poorer than himself whatever exceeded his strict necessity.^[49] Covered with vermin, repulsive to behold, he was to many an object of contempt: he was taken for a madman or an idler. Beneath those rags, however, lived a man of rare delicacy of conscience and peace, who edified those who dared approach him.

“One must be miserly with the goods of Heaven, and lavish with the goods of the earth.” — Saying attributed to Saint Benedict Joseph Labre^[50]

The hidden radiance

Little by little, priests, religious, and simple Romans sensed the sanctity of this beggar. His confessor, Father Marconi, gathered his confidences and would later note the elevation of his prayer, his ecstasies before the Blessed Sacrament, his knowledge of the things of God in a man who had renounced all profane study to keep only Scripture, the breviary, and books of piety.^[51] The poor man of the Colosseum had become, unknown to all, one of the great contemplatives of his time.

Abandonment to Providence

The whole spirituality of Benedict Joseph is contained in one word: abandonment. Having neither dwelling, nor provision, nor assured morrow, he lived literally on Providence, receiving each day his bread as a grace and giving no thought to the next day. His motto — “The good God will assist me and lead me” — was not a formula, but the real contract of his existence. In this he joins the great tradition of trust taught by his contemporary Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in the line of Grignion de Montfort, and later illustrated by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

The prayer of the three hearts

The Labre tradition has gathered, from his words, a prayer that condenses his ideal: the prayer of the three hearts, in which he asks God for three hearts in one — one wholly for God, another for his neighbour, the third hard towards himself.

“My God, grant me, that I may love You, three hearts in one. The first, for You, pure and ardent as a flame, keeping me continually in Your Presence [...]. The second, tender and fraternal towards my neighbour [...]. The third, of brass, hard towards myself, making me victorious over the snares of the flesh, guarding me from self-love [...] and urging me to abstinence.” — Prayer of the three hearts, after Saint Benedict Joseph Labre^[52]

Penance and joy

His life was an unbroken penance: fasts, vigils, exhausting marches, accepted contempt, endured filth and vermin as a mortification. And yet, all witnesses agree on his profound cheerfulness and gentleness. There was in him no sad dolorism, but the freedom of one who has nothing left to lose and has found everything. His penance was the reverse side of a joy: the joy of belonging wholly to God.

Radical evangelical poverty

Benedict Joseph Labre is doubtless the most literal expression of the poverty of the Gospel: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20). Where the mendicant orders had institutionalized poverty, he lived it without a safety net, without community, without roof, like a living challenge flung at a society that measured man by his fortune. His sanctity lies in no work founded nor in any book written, but in a life offered, naked, given to the uttermost.

Holy Wednesday 1783

At the beginning of Holy Week 1783, the pilgrim was at the end of his strength. On Holy Wednesday, 16 April, having attended the services at the church of Santa Maria ai Monti, in the Monti district, he collapsed on the steps of the sanctuary, worn out by austerities and illness.^[53][54] Passers-by lifted him and carried him into the neighbouring house of a kindly butcher, Francesco Zaccarelli, who had befriended him; there he died that same evening, aged thirty-five.^[55][56]

“È morto il santo!”

Scarcely was his death known when a cry ran through the lanes of Rome, carried by the children: “È morto il santo!” — “The saint is dead!”^[57][58] The crowd flocked; people pressed to touch the body, to tear a scrap of his rags as a relic. The beggar whom the city had passed without seeing was recognized, in an instant, for what he was: a saint. His body was buried in the church of Santa Maria ai Monti, where it still rests.

One hundred and thirty-six healings: the trial

So great was the popular movement that the ecclesiastical authority swiftly opened an inquiry. The saint's confessor, Father Marconi, published as early as 1783 an account of his life; in it he attests that, by 6 July 1783 — less than three months after the death — one hundred and thirty-six miraculous healings had been duly certified through his intercession.^[59][60] The beatification process would rest on this extraordinary flowering of miracles.

Beatification (1860) and canonization (1881)

The path to the altars was regular. Pius IX declared Benedict Joseph Venerable in 1859, then beatified him on 20 May 1860, before an immense crowd.^[61][62] Twenty years later, on 8 December 1881 — on the feast of the Immaculate Conception — Leo XIII inscribed him in the catalogue of saints.^[63][64] His liturgical feast was fixed on 16 April, the day of his death.

A saint for the age of Leo XIII

This canonization of 1881 may be read as a sign of contradiction. To raise to the altars this beggar-pilgrim turned adorer of the Forty Hours, on the threshold of an age dominated by positivism, materialism, and the cult of material progress, was to propose the reverse figure: a man who had possessed nothing, produced nothing, accumulated nothing, and who had yet reached the summit of human greatness — union with God. Benedict Joseph Labre thus appears as the sign of contradiction offered to an industrial world to which the Church, under Leo XIII, would recall the dignity of the poor and the primacy of the spirit.

Patron of the homeless and the rejected

His life has made him the natural patron of all those whom the world casts aside: the homeless, beggars, tramps, pilgrims, but also single people, persons turned away from religious life — as he was four times — and the mentally ill, in memory of the anguish that caused his dismissal from Sept-Fonts.^[65][66] Few saints speak so directly to contemporary distress.

Amettes and the Labre cult

His native village of Amettes, in Pas-de-Calais, has become a place of pilgrimage: there his birthplace, turned into a shrine, is venerated, along with the church of Saint-Sulpice where he was baptized. In Rome, the church of Santa Maria ai Monti keeps his tomb and perpetuates his memory. Associations — such as The Friends of Saint Benedict Labre — maintain his memory and the spirituality of abandonment and poverty of which he was the witness.^[67]

His place among the saints of the eighteenth century

In the pantheon of Enlightenment-era Catholicism, Benedict Joseph Labre holds a place apart. In the line of Grignion de Montfort, the poor itinerant missionary of the preceding century, and alongside Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who reformed moral theology while preaching to the poor, and Saint Paul of the Cross, who founded the Passionists, he founded nothing, wrote almost nothing, and left only a trail of bare feet on the roads of Europe. And it is precisely this destitution that makes his fruitfulness: he recalls, to every generation, that sanctity is measured neither by works nor by knowledge, but by love — and that the poorest of men may be the richest before God.

He had nothing, and he possessed everything.

• Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) — Labre's contemporary, Doctor of the Church and apostle of the poor in the Kingdom of Naples.
• Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673–1716) — the great poor itinerant missionary of the preceding Catholic revival, in the same vein of itinerant poverty.
• Saint Paul of the Cross (1694–1775) — founder of the Passionists, mystic of the Passion and contemporary of Labre.
• Saint Francis of Assisi — the Poverello whose poverty Labre, a Franciscan tertiary, took as his model.
• The Shrine of Loreto — the Holy House, the goal of the yearly pilgrimage Labre made all his life.
• Leo XIII (1810–1903) — the pope who canonized Labre in 1881.